Hey, Mom! The Explanation.

Here's the permanent dedicated link to my first Hey, Mom! post and the explanation of the feature it contains.

Also,

Wednesday, February 6, 2019

A Sense of Doubt blog post #1447 - Alan Moore Legacy and Top Ten plus some comic book stuff


A Sense of Doubt blog post #1447 - Alan Moore Legacy and Top Ten plus some comic book stuff

Hi, there's lots of comic book stuff in here. Hold on.

I am probably going to do more Friday and maybe Sunday, if I have enough time. I have an infection, and it's thrown me for a loop.

Mostly, this post is about the great Alan Moore and his legacy. But I wanted to add some things for my classes.

For example, I talked about the book The Ten Cent Plague in class on Tuesday, and I wanted to share the link here. And so, then, I decided to share more links of some of my better comic posts before I go into the Alan Moore stuff.

SOME COMIC BOOK STUFF

"I think Hitler was a beginner compared to the comic book industry," wrote psychiatrist Frederic Wertham, famous for the the 1950s exposé The Seduction of the Innocent, which "indicted comic books as a leading cause of juvenile delinquency" (Hadju pg. 6). "The time has come to legislate these books off the newsstands and out of the candy stores."

From The Ten Cent Plague by David Hadju about the years the comic book industry came under censorship fire, literally.

Here's my review: The Ten Cent Plague book review




Here's a bunch of links to my stuff.......

COMIC BOOK COMMENTARY AND OPINION BY ME

Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #627 - ASM#25 - Spider-Man pauses midfight to consider racist message

A Sense of Doubt blog post #1439 - "Comics Are Going Downhill" - NOT!

A Sense of Doubt blog post #1391 - It's About Family: If extraordinary, add the ordinary: POP!


COMIC BOOK REVIEWS and ROUND UPS and COVER GALLERIES with comments

About Detective Comics, Fantastic Four, Flash, Superman, Hawkman
Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #624 - My Oldest - A collection of comic books - part one

Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #632 - Iron Fist #1 - 2017, a comic book review

A Sense of Doubt blog post #1400 - DIE - a comic book review

Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #961 - Best Comics of 2017 via EW - Black Panther - pt.1

Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #606 - Comic Book Cover Gallery 2017 pt.4

Weekly Comics for 1405.07 - Clone, Original Sin, Warren Ellis Moonknight,  Miles Morales - Spider-Man, Aquaman and the Others.

Weekly Comics for 1405.21 - Gotham, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Original Sin, Forever Evil, Velvet, Daredevil, Hulk, Amazing Spider-Man, Thor, Uncanny X-Men, and Saga.

ABOUT MAKING COMICS

A Sense of Doubt blog post #1370 - The Levitz Grid and Comic Book Paradigm

A Sense of Doubt blog post #1441 - Script for Trees #1 - Warren Ellis

CHARACTER FEATURES/STUDIES

Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #958 - Kirby's Black Panther

A Sense of Doubt blog post #1290 - Captain America for Labor Day - T-shirt reprint

Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #290 - Doctor Strange - T-shirt reprint and MOVIE TRAILER

T-shirt #267 - DareDevil - Black long-sleeved shirt

T-shirt #287 - Daredevil Red Logo





This from Kieron Gillen:



 https://www.tor.com/2013/01/14/the-great-alan-moore-reread-the-alan-moore-legacy/

THE GREAT ALAN MOORE REREAD

The Great Alan Moore Reread: The Alan Moore Legacy


Mon Jan 14, 2013 4:00pm


Tor.com comics blogger Tim Callahan has dedicated the next twelve months more than a year to a reread of all of the major Alan Moore comics (and plenty of minor ones as well). Each week he will provide commentary on what he’s been reading. Welcome to the 64th installment.
When I kicked off this whole Great Alan Moore Reread thing, in the final days of October 2011, I laid out my plan, and my purpose, and added, about Alan Moore: “He has certainly written dozens of amazing, transcendent comic books. But he’s also written some terrible ones, too. At least, that’s my memory of his work.”
Now, I didn’t reread every single story Alan Moore has written. Eager to get into some of his more famous—or notorious—early work by starting with Marvelman, I skipped comic strips like The Stars My Degradation or Three-Eyes McGurk and His Death Planet Commandos (I know, I’m sorry!). And even with 63 installments of my reread, I didn’t address Moore’s two prose stories for 1982’s BJ and the Bear Annual, nor his Night Raven text stories, nor his novels or his spoken word pieces, and I didn’t talk about his recent, self-produced Dodgem Logic local culture and history zine at all. I made an early decision to stick to his comics work, mostly, and it was enough. A truly comprehensive Mega-Great Absolutely Complete Alan Moore Reread is a lifetime project, particularly because the guy’s still out there writing essays and short films and maybe even a comic book once in a while.
Even though he’s still working, and still producing plenty of material worth talking about (though with less frequency than in his younger years), as we come to a close on our admittedly limited but still hopefully Great reread that we reflect not just on the comics that Moore has written, but on the way he has influenced so many other creators. It’s time to take stock in the Alan Moore legacy, even if the shockwaves of his influence run deeper than we can clearly see on the surface of popular culture right now. But even if we stick to the surface, there’s plenty to find in Moore’s legacy.
Along the way of this reread, I’ve provided some historical context for some of the comics and made note of when Moore’s work affected the work of those who followed him into the four-color fantasies of the comic book marketplace. I’m sure I pointed out how Marvelman was a milestone of superhero deconstruction, and though Moore wasn’t the first to provide some real-world context for insane superpowers and costumed absurdity (nearly twenty years earlier, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby told stories about the Fantastic Four going broke, and half-a-generation later Denny O’Neil and Neal Adams brought drug use and racial strife to the usually otherworldly exploits of Green Lantern), Moore’s specific approach to Marvelman was the model other comic book creators would try to mimic.
Not right away. It had to sink in a bit, and the writers working in the industry at the time were less impressionable than the up-and-comers who would soon enter the industry. But between Marvelman and Swamp Thing and Watchmen, Moore established a kind of smart, literate, deadly-serious-but-viciously-ironic embrace of superhero tropes that was often attempted by others but something was always missing. What was missing was, of course, Moore’s unique sensibility. His seriousness-of-approach could be copied. His poetic captions. His viciousness. Even his humor and sense of irony. But not all at once. And not with the ineffable playfulness that makes Moore who he is.
The fields of the comic book kingdom are littered with almost-Alan-Moore projects, many of which found commercial success because readers saw just enough of the Moore influence to make them seem maybe-just-good-enough-to-be-worthwhile. Mostly, they aren’t. And they are forgotten soon after the initial buzz of hey, this is kind of like Alan Moore isn’t it wears off.
How often do people talk about J. Michael Stracyznski projects like Rising Stars or Supreme Poweranymore? Those comics wear the Alan Moore influence on every sleeve, and there was a time when both of those comics achieved a level of attention that, in retrospect, they didn’t much deserve. I suppose there may be a few readers still championing those mostly-forgotten comics, but their number has dwindled as people have gone on to read other, better comics. And, in 2012, Straczynski started doing his Alan Moore impression even more overtly, scripting a few of the Before Watchmencomics. Read any of those issues and you’ll see how short he comes to anything close to the Alan Moore ideal.
When novelist Brad Meltzer turned his attention to comics, with a short Green Arrow run and then the superhero rape-mystery miniseries Identity Crisis, he may have referenced other Bronze Age creators like Marv Wolfman and George Perez, but his comics felt more like thrice reheated Alan Moore leftovers. When Geoff Johns brought back some of the elements of Alan Moore’s Green Lantern mythology and incorporated it into his relaunch of Hal Jordan’s career and everything that followed leading up to the Blackest Night event, Moore himself accused DC Comics of “desperate and humiliating” behavior. “It’s tragic,” Moore said in that interview from 2009. “The comics that I read as a kid that inspired me were full of ideas. They didn’t need some upstart from England to come over there and tell them how to do comics. They’d got plenty of ideas of their own. But these days, I increasingly get a sense of the comics industry going through my trashcan like raccoons in the dead of the night.”
Moore, though, has admitted that he doesn’t read current comics, and hasn’t for a long time, so he’s reacting more about what he hears about contemporary comics than what he actually sees on the page. Prominent comic book writer Jason Aaron responded to Moore’s criticism of the current state of comics, and Moore’s attacks against the current crop of creators, and some of his colleagues responded with their own commentary. None of it means all that much, other than the shadow of Alan Moore is so large that even his admittedly uninformed opinions carry enough weight to cause extreme reactions. His presence looms over everything done in and around the superhero genre to this day.
And even if some of the best comic book writers of the past two decades have been able to fly out from under Moore’s shadow, many of them began their careers—or produced some of their seminal work—in a Moore-ish vein. Grant Morrison may have been writing comics before Marvelmanchanged the rules, but when he was trying to break into American comics, he did his version of Alan Moore for the opening story arc on Animal Man, waiting until issue #5, “The Coyote Gospel,” to lend his own voice to the series. Warren Ellis went on to produce some of the most influential comics of the late-1990s/early-2000s, but work like Marvel’s Ruins owes a debt to the bleaker side of Moore and his later Wildstorm work was largely a spin-off of what Moore had started to do with WildC.A.T.s, though Ellis expanded the envelope with The Authority and Planetary.
Then there’s Moore’s most famous disciple: Neil Gaiman. Gaiman’s sensibility was shaped by dozens of influences and Moore was clearly just one, but you’ll find nothing that’s as much a spiritual sequel to Swamp Thing as Gaiman’s Sandman run. Gaiman builds on Moore’s Swamp Thingmythology explicitly in his series about Dream and the Endless, and though Gaiman has his own interests in story and the art of storytelling—constantly explored in Sandman—his highly-regarded series can trace much of its personality back to grandpa Alan Moore.
Surely Vertigo Comics would never have existed without Alan Moore, and the attempt to brand the Karen Berger line of comics to recapture some of the Moore magic, even if Berger may well have ended up with her own imprint anyway, and even if DC has never truly acknowledged their debt to Moore.
This is all comics stuff, though, and surely Moore has had a wider influence than that, but that’s much more difficult to determine. The film versions of his comics may have had an impact, but they aren’t exactly faithful to the source material and the style of Moore’s telling is as important—more important, mostly—than whatever content translates to the screen. The largest influence is probably from the V for Vendetta movie, which has led to the adoption of the Guy Fawkes mask as a symbol of protest, revolution, and the power of the individual to resist the crushing jackboots of oppression. Moore has seen the iconography from one of his comic books became a real-life symbol, and that’s an influence that will linger.
But in the end, this reread was about, as I said earlier in this post, my own efforts to reread his comics and see what they had to say. As I admitted, I remembered them quite fondly, with only a few “terrible” exceptions along the way. If anyone has read this entire Great Alan Moore Reread series, you’ll recognize that I didn’t find much that was terrible as I reread Moore’s comics. There were a few, but they were rare. Mostly, Alan Moore’s comics are just really good comic books that are still inspirational in their mastery of the form. They might not all be transcendent masterpieces, but they are all—well, almost all—worth going back to and discovering year after year. The ultimate legacy of Alan Moore’s comics is that they’re just good comics. Really good, overall. And with more variety than you might expect in three or four successful careers.
I’ve spent 16 months rereading Alan Moore, and I’m still excited about reading what he’s done and what he has left to do. He’s one of the great ones, so let’s keep reading him, even after this series of posts has come to an end.
NEXT TIME: The final post in The Great Alan Moore Reread: My All-Time Alan Moore Top 10!
Tim Callahan writes about comics for Tor.com, Comic Book Resources, and Back Issue magazine. Follow him on Twitter.







https://www.tor.com/2013/01/21/the-great-alan-moore-reread-the-all-time-top-10-best-comics-written-by-alan-moore/

THE GREAT ALAN MOORE REREAD

The Great Alan Moore Reread: The All-Time Top 10 Best Comics Written by Alan Moore


Mon Jan 21, 2013 4:00pm

Tor.com comics blogger Tim Callahan has dedicated the next twelve months more than a year to a reread of all of the major Alan Moore comics (and plenty of minor ones as well). Each week he will provide commentary on what he’s been reading. Welcome to the 65th and FINAL installment.
After sixty-four weeks, here we are: the end of The Great Alan Moore Reread. Last week I talked about Moore’s legacy in the comic book industry—and the world—so we don’t need to rehash the where-we’ve-come-from-and-where-we’re-going speech again. But instead, let’s talk about the best of Alan Moore’s comic book work. Looking at his career, what would I designate as the capital-b Best of the Best? What ten comics would be the ultimate incarnation of Moore’s genre-bending, highly-influential comic book scripting?
I’m glad you asked!
Here’s the All-Time Alan Moore Top 10, as determined by me, the guy who has reread all of the Alan Moore comics over the past year-and-three-months and written about 100,000 words on the topic. All of the Alan Moore comics are worth reading (well, maybe not all of the later Extreme or Wildstorm work, but even those have something interesting going on at times), but these are the cherries on top of the ice cream sundae that is the Alan Moore oeuvre:

10. V for Vendetta, by Alan Moore and David Lloyd
I will still always dream of a world where the series was completed in black and white, but this challenging work remains one of Moore’s best, and Lloyd’s bleak artistry outlines the harsh conglomeration of a fascist state with manipulative media as well as anyone ever has. The title character—popularly interpreted as a rebel working against a corrupt system—may be more of a monster than some of his victims, but by giving us such a charming but merciless protagonist, Moore and Lloyd avoid simple answers to the tough moral questions.
Above all, V for Vendetta will haunt you long after you close its covers, even after the second or third or fourth read.

9. Captain Britain, by Alan Moore and Alan Davis
Moore’s first superhero work, now thirty years old, remains the ur-text of modern-day capes-and-cowls comic books. Too often does an incoming creative team break down and destroy a character before building him back up, but that approach was pioneered by Moore in his “Captain Britain” serials before he went on to explode the series into a widescreen action comic the likes of which the world rarely saw until the kids who grew up reading this series started writing and drawing their own comics a decade later. But this All-Time Alan Moore Top 10 isn’t based on what’s historically important. It’s based on what’s the best to read, and Moore and Davis’s “Captain Britain” comics are brutal and funny and wide-ranging and intimate.
Alan Moore didn’t just learn how to write superhero comics while plotting and scripting the adventures of Brian Braddock and friends, he demonstrated that he had massive storytelling ambitions from the start. “Captain Britain” does what so few superhero comics can: make you care about what happens while an insane, unrecognizable, imaginative world launches at your eyes.

8. Superman Annual #11, by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons
This is the only example of a single issue on this list of series and graphic novels, and while I thought about including “The Superman Stories” as an entry by itself—like I did with the original reread post—that would have been disingenuous. “Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?” the two-part story that closed out Superman’s pre-Crisiscontinuity just isn’t in the same league as Superman Annual #11. The former has some evocative moments, but it’s the comic book equivalent of a sinister clip show with a tragic tinge. With Dave Gibbons in Superman Annual #11, though, Moore tells perhaps the single best Superman story of all time.
In that issue, “For the Man Who Has Everything,” Superman is forced to accept reality and break free from an all-too-enticing dream of what might have been. It’s a gorgeous-looking superhero action comic that doesn’t skimp on thematic resonance. If you want a single, self-contained but powerful dose of what superhero comics can be like when they’re done well, this is a superior example.

7. A Small Killing, by Alan Moore and Oscar Zarate
Part Nic Roeg nightmare and part semi-autobiographical exploration of a man who compromises his artistic integrity to produce commercial products for cash, this not-too-well-known graphic novel is one of Moore’s few completed non-genre comics, and the stunningly evocative work of Zarate would make it the belle of the alt-comics ball in any recent year.
But it’s over 20 years old, written at a time after Moore had broken away from mainstream superhero comics (and before he would return to the weird and maybe-not-really-wonderful industry as Image Comics exploded into the market). It’s easy to read A Small Killing as Moore’s commentary on his own compromises, showing a man so haunted by his childhood dreams that’s he’s forced to violently exorcise what’s left of his innocence, but even if you ignore that possibly-self-referential facet of the book, this is a great comic about a human struggling against himself and against the cruel world that would force him into that unwinnable situation. Yet it’s not bleak and hopeless. It’s alive. Like a wriggling snake sinking its teeth into your heart.

6. Smax, by Alan Moore and Zander Cannon
If you had told me when I began the Great Alan Moore Reread that Top 10, Alan Moore’s superheroes-as-cops comedy/melodrama would not crack my All-Time Alan Moore Top 10, I would have called you an evil lying liar. I mean, “Top 10” is even in the title, and that series was really good, and hyper-detailed, and how could it not be considered one of Moore’s best?
As much as I like Top 10, and I sure liked it a lot even after reading it last year, it’s not as substantial or as entertaining as the rest of the comics on this list. And it’s not as good as its own spin-off. Smax takes a different approach than Top 10—pure parody instead of pastiche plus satire—but Smax is the better comic all-around. Zander Cannon brings humor and humanity to this slapstick fantasy quest, and though Alan Moore isn’t known for his hilarity, he sure does have a wicked sense of humor that he’s not afraid to unleash. Some of his other comics are actually, um, comical, but Smax is the best of the Moore funnybooks. It’s pretty mean, too. Just the way we like ‘em back home.

5. From Hell, by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell
If Smax is Alan Moore at his most successfully hilarious, From Hellis Alan Moore at his most methodically serious. But it’s Moore’s attention to detail—and the disciplined work of collaborator Eddie Campbell—that makes the narrative architecture of this story as interesting as its unfolding plot.
Yes, there is literal architecture at the heart of the conspiracy within From Hell, something we learn quite a bit about thanks to a rousing bit of London travel and a guide to Freemasonry, but when I’m talking “architecture” in this comic, I’m talking about Moore’s structural poetics. From Hell is constructed from historical reference materials and panicked suppositions and the psychogeography of a specific time and a specific place when bad things happened to many people.
The book may be about Jack the Ripper and the hunt to catch the killer, but that’s only what it’s about when you turn it into a tame Hollywood movie version. That’s the surface. Beneath, Moore and Campbell give us a chilling portrait of the Victorian Age, a true work of horror that relies not on shocks and gore but on the inhuman unfolding of history.

4. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, by Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill
The conceit is simple: public domain literary characters team up…for adventure! In the hands of Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill it becomes something far more than that.
Every time I reread The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen series—whether it’s the original six issues or the Mars attacks follow-up or The Black Dossier or the Harry-Potter-and-the-End-of-the-World in the three-part Century—I love it all the more.
Mina Murray is one of the great heroines in fiction, thanks to the resurrection performed by Moore and O’Neill, and she leads the ragged band of British agents against the most menacing foes. That’s all great and fun and deadly and, thanks to the carved linework of O’Neill, hideously beautiful, but it’s the literary gamesmanship that provides abundant texture to the series. Moore and O’Neill pack allusions into every page, and it takes a whole team of annotators to get most of the references, but you won’t need the cheat sheets to get the point of each chapter of the larger story. The allusions amplify and enhance, tremendously, and they add a wink and a nod to each section, but there’s still a heart and soul to these comics that tell of flawed men and women facing insurmountable obstacles with wit and vigor. And sometime dying in the process.
And, as I write this, there’s still the promise of more. Nemo: Heart of Ice is due out in another month or two. It’s not over yet.

3. Marvelman, by Alan Moore, Garry Leach, Alan Davis, and Friends
If you read my original reread posts on this series, you’ll know that I stubbornly cling to calling this comic “Marvelman,” even though it became “Miracleman” once it resumed publication from Eclipse Comics in America. So my revisionist historical version of Marvelman runs up through the Eclipse issues until Moore steps away from the series, leaving it in the hands of Neil Gaiman, who never got a chance to finish what he started (to continue).
But why is Marvelman so great that it deserves a spot in the All-Time Alan Moore Top THREE?
Because this is the one that changed everything, and it’s still a heck of a comic to read, if you can find it.
The Eclipse reprints of the earlier Warrior installments of the series are gaudily colored and the word balloons and captions are too small, and the later issues—particularly the ones drawn by John Totleben—are rare and somewhat pricey for single issues. But Marvelman is worth tracking down as a milestone of the superhero genre and as a declaration by Alan Moore about what it means to enter the Modern Era of mainstream comics.
Marvelmanis based on a Captain Marvel analogue, with the cynicism of the 1980s and a dose of real-world logic smashed into its innocent shell. The opening few chapters provide a blueprint that revisionist superhero comics would follow forever after—the revelation that everything the hero thought he knew was wrong, and he may not even really be a hero to begin with—and the inky realism of Garry Leach’s drawings only helped Moore make his stand on behalf of smart, relevant, devastatingly powerful superhero comics.
The fact that everyone who came after Moore took the faux-realism and the hyper-violence of Marvelman as its primary lesson isn’t Moore’s fault. He did it right, and they just missed the point.

2. Watchmen, by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons
Marvelmanwas born first, but Watchmen is the slightly younger child who learned from his sibling and turned out even more refined. The precisely designed structuralism of Watchmen can make the comic seem unnecessarily cold and self-important, until you actually sit down to read it. Watchmen’s reputation as a masterwork imparts it with a kind of aura of untouchability that’s not true to its trashy roots.
Yes, it is a well-crafted, exceedingly ambitious story with multiple narrators and multiple layers of meaning, but it’s also a comic about a mad scientist and a naked physicist and a vigilante who breaks people’s wrists. It’s about love and death and sex and violence and politics and science and war and a thirst for peace. Even when it was twelve single floppy issues, it was a big book, and nowadays you’re likely to see it in some massive Absolute Edition or regal hardcover. It deserves that treatment for the role it has played in showing that comics can do more than just tell racy stories about guys and gals in tights. But it’s really just a pulpy superhero story at its core, and it’s one of the best ever told because of how it’s told. Few comics in history surpass its achievements, and even fewer are as engaging and exciting on an aesthetic or storytelling level. There’s only one Alan Moore comic that’s better, and it’s….

1. Swamp Thing, by Alan Moore, Steve Bissette, John Totleben, and Friends
Watchmen may be more precisely crafted and Marvelman may be more pioneering, but there’s only one correct answer to the question of “What is the Best Alan Moore Comic Book Series Ever?”
Swamp Thing, of course.
With Swamp Thing, Alan Moore trotted out his Marvelman revisionism on the much more fertile ground of American comics, and Moore’s early issues of this muck monster series show his facility at presenting characters as trite and overdone as the Justice League with a completely new point of view. In Moore’s Swamp Thing, the gods in the satellite above the Earth are terrifying and unknowable. It’s Swamp Thing’s world, and we all just walk on top of it.
Moore’s collaborators—mostly Bissette and Totleben and their former schoolmate Rick Veitch—give the comic a terrifying sense of frantic unreality, and their contributions cannot be minimized. Moore is only as good as they are, but they’re very good here and so is Moore. His second issue on the series, “The Anatomy Lesson” stands as one of the best single issue comics in the history of the medium, presenting a tragic unfolding of horrifying vegetable rebirth inside a sterile corporate laboratory. And the issues that followed—everything that makes up what would become the first Swamp Thing collected edition—present a challenging environmentalist horror action comic disguised as a monster story dressed in superheroic garb. It’s weird and wonderful and Moore tries to write the captions and dialogue like savage poetry and he succeeds.
Swamp Thing stumbles a bit at times, but for over 40 issues, Alan Moore chronicles the journey of the creature that once thought it was a man named Alec Holland, and where the monster travels to the depths of hell or into deep space, he’s always bound by his mortal love back home in the bayou. It’s messy and uneven and melodramatic and full of life and ambition and enthusiasm for comics and everything that surrounds it. It’s not pure Alan Moore, but it’s sloppy, amazing, wondrous Alan Moore and it’s the number one All-Time Best.
Tim Callahan would like to thank everyone who has been reading The Great Alan Moore Reread each week, and he’s curious to see what your All-Time Alan Moore Top 10 list would look like. Post your own version in the comments, and show your work!






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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 1902.06 - 10:10

- Days ago = 1313 days ago

- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
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Tuesday, February 5, 2019

A Sense of Doubt blog post #1446 - Ella Megalast Burls Forever - a Musical Monday Cocteau Twins Mix for 1902.05


A Sense of Doubt blog post #1446 - Ella Megalast Burls Forever - a Musical Monday on Tuesday Mix of Cocteau Twins  for 1902.05

I created this mix of some of my favourite Cocteau Twins music maybe twenty years ago.

This ethereal and heavenly music is some of my favourite music of all time.

EVERY semester, I share the wonder and joy, the beauty and elegance, the delicacy and harmony of Cocteau Twins music with my students.

I wrote about the Cocteau Twins during my year of the T-shirts blog:

T-shirt #300 Cocteau Twins


But nothing spurs me to action more than knowing I have other shirts (or at least one other) to be able to write extended and loving content to a band that I adore. So, seeing that one of my longer essays or special features would not be completed in time (or at least not completed to my standards) for T-shirt #300, I decided to share this shirt and some thoughts on a band that would win, hands down, the award for the band I have most listened to over the years.

In fact, looking back on my post for T-shirt #97 - Kraftwerk, in which I listed the albums I have listened to most, the largest number of times, in my life, you will not see the Cocteau Twins in the top ten. I am starting to think this is an oversight. I may have over estimated the number of times I have listened to some of those albums in my top ten. Though there were times in my life when I listened to some of those albums daily or nearly daily, some are newer, and I have listened to various Cocteau Twins albums over and over since my discovery of them in the mid-1980s. I am not inclined to go back and change those lists too much because I would have to place ALL the Cocteau Twins albums somewhere in the lists. When I made that list, I was trying for some variety rather than listing five of the Cocteau Twins albums in the top ten most listened to albums as they probably deserve. I do think that list needs some adjustment as a Cocteau Twins album belongs in the top ten. So if you want to check out my list again on T-shirt #97 - Kraftwerk, go ahead. I will probably also post my revision to Facebook if you catch me there.

Okay, list updated.

Hey... it's always fun to find things on Amazon with a simple search like "Cocteau Twins Book."

FIRST TIME I HEARD COCTEAU TWINS BOOK

Today's shirt comes from my one and only time to see the Cocteau Twins in concert as in the ticket stub to the right. Once again memory fails. I was between relationships in March of 1991. It's times like this that I would like a time machine as I have no idea with whom I went to that concert, but it was surely NOT my recent ex-girlfriend. I don't remember much about the concert other than I loved it as I love the Cocteau Twins.

One of my most often played mixes is a Cocteau Twins mix which I named after one of their songs: "Ella Megalast Burls Forever."

If you have never heard the Cocteau Twins start with the next video.
There is no further proof needed of why Cocteau Twins have made some of the most beautiful music in the modern era.

COCTEAU TWINS - MUSIC

The music of Cocteau Twins is difficult to describe. Live stuff is different than studio. The studio stuff features multiple layered sonic landscapes achieved with a variety of technological devices.

In many ways, Cocteau Twins defined the British 4AD label: COCTEAU TWINS AT 4AD. Their work evolved from an earlier, raw, bass heavy sounds on Garlands, their first LP, to the eventual more "pop" sound of Heaven or Las Vegas.

Here's the WIKIPEDIA description, which is not bad, though it hardly defines the band that I love so much.

Cocteau Twins were a Scottish rock band active from 1979 to 1997, known for innovative instrumentation and atmospheric, non-lyrical vocals. The original members were Elizabeth Fraser (vocals), Robin Guthrie (guitar, drum machine) and Will Heggie (bass guitar), who was replaced by multi-instrumentalist Simon Raymonde early in the band's career.
While the entire band earned much critical praise, Elizabeth Fraser's distinctive soprano vocals received the most attention. At times barely decipherable, Fraser seemed to veer into glossolalia and mouth music. Allmusic reviewer Ned Raggett writes that "part of her appeal is how she can make hard-to-interpret lyrics so emotionally gripping."
Much has been written about Liz's lyrics and her "vocalizations." Ultimately, I don't care what she's singing. Part of loving the Cocteau Twins has to do with giving up knowing the lyrics. It's music. You dig into the music and experience the sounds, the sonic journey through the tunnel of palpable sound.

Really the best introduction to Cocteau Twins is to listen to their music. I may "wax and wane" more about their music in a future post as I am getting a Cocteau Twins shirt for my birthday. But here's some tracks via video to whet your appetite if you take the time to listen or listen again if you are already acquainted.

I find it almost impossible to describe the beauty of that song. "Carolyn's Fingers" from the 1988 album Blue Bell Knoll  is definitely my favorite Cocteau Twins song, and I think it's a good place to start if you have never heard of or heard the band.



Stay tuned for more Cocteau Twins in a future blog post. If you are newly introduced to the band because of my blog, let me know what you think. If you know the band and found something of interest, please let me know, too.

I do have a new t-shirt for Blue Bell Knoll that I could write about...

Here's the music. The aforementioned "Carolyn's Fingers" is the first song.

I have two more Cocteau mixes in the works. One is done and focuses on a lot of re-mixes and rare B-sides, that I called "Oil of Angels" after one of the songs.

I am also making a mix (not finished yet) that centers on the first track of Victorialand: "Lazy Calm."

ENJOY!

YOUR TUBE URL LINK:

 ELLA MEGALAST BURLS FOREVER - A COCTEAU TWINS MIX


YOUR TUBE VIDEO POD PLAYER:




 ONE AT A TIME










































ELIZABETH FRASER HAUNTS ME... 



She also elates and inspires me; there's no one I would rather hear providing instrumental backing to her vocals than Robin Guthrie and Will Heggie (bass guitar), who was replaced by multi-instrumentalist Simon Raymonde (later).



The album art was part of the genius of the band and of all 4AD products.







I was at this show...
Cocteau Twins - Live @ Royal Oak Theatre, Detroit, USA, 24-11-1990
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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 1902.05 - 10:10

- Days ago = 1312 days ago

- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
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Monday, February 4, 2019

A Sense of Doubt blog post #1445 - My Watchmen Analysis for class - LCC - ENGLISH 101


A Sense of Doubt blog post #1445 - My Watchmen Analysis for class - LCC - ENGLISH 101

I interrupt the normal flow of events on this blog to bring special content for class.

Usually I share MUSICAL MONDAY on a Monday each week, but I am postponing my musical mix until tomorrow to share analysis that I shared with students last week on the Watchmen graphic novel.

For the uninitiated, I already shared the assignments (both solo and group):

A Sense of Doubt blog post #1439 - Watchmen Assignments English 101 LCC

and some good commentary for re-reading the comic:

A Sense of Doubt blog post #1440 - Re-Reading WATCHMEN

CONNECTIONS

One thing I am trying to get students to see is the connections within the text. Elements of the text refer to other things in the text to create a resonance between image and text or between two images or two instances of text.

Comprehending Comics and Graphic Novels: Watchmen as a Case for Cognition
By Travis White-Schwoch and David N. Rapp
Northwestern University

states that:

"In comics, pictures and text support each other; these supports emerge through
complementary depictions and descriptions rather than by presenting redundant information. For
example, in chapter 6, page 15, of Watchmen an unmasked Rorschach describes his origins as a
crime fighter to his prison psychiatrist. In that discussion Rorschach talks about the Comedian
understanding more than his contemporaries, while the illustrated narrative shows the Comedian
behaving in an obnoxious and confrontational manner. This juxtaposition helps to exemplify the
traits of the character. The pictures and words provide complementary details that, when
integrated, encourage the construction of a more complex model of the story characters and
narratives. In most cases, these combined presentations provide richer examples containing more
information, and in less space, than would be available in traditional text-only narratives" (Schwoch, Rapp, 3).




Also, See the Strings: Watchmen and the Under-Language of Media
by Stuart Moulthrop

Moulthrop talks more about the external connections. Elements of Watchmen that connect with ideas  outside the novel, such as these references to "Fat Man" and a famous Time Magazine cover.

"In the fatal event, Osterman is betrayed by a pair of timepieces. In 1959, he enters an experimental chamber to retrieve a wristwatch he has repaired for his fiancee, Janie Slater, becoming trapped by a time lock on the door, thus dooming him to disintegration (IV.8.2). Albert Einstein, or the collateral result of his physics, is still very much to blame. Slater's wristwatch is smashed by a "fat man," connecting it by allusion to the image of a blasted watch on the cover of Time magazine in 1985, commemorating the fortieth anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing (IV.6.5; IV.24.7)."Fat Man" was the nickname for the plutonium bomb dropped on Nagasaki. The Hiroshima device was called "Little Boy." For what it's worth, the panel preceding the fat man's tread (IV.6.4) shows a young boy in tears" (Moulthrop, 9-10).

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/special/2014/newsspec_8079/index.html



I am more interested in students seeing the internal connections. Like this one.



Or this.
Clearly the pirate story's narrative mirrors the Watchmen novel's narrative. Dr. Manhattan has left earth, no longer caring for the people of his "home." The juxtaposition here is clear: the hero of the pirate story is caring for the dead, those slaughtered by the Black Freighter, which is a clear foreshadowing and symbol of Veidt's "apocalypse" to come, but then we cut to the news stand owner and the kid reading the comic, two people who will die, for the connection with the line "who would care for them, now I was gone?" (Watchmen, pg. 22 chapter four)

I want students to see the way the connections resonate and make meaning.

For instance, there's this one. From chapter five, entitled "Fearful Symmetry," which is a quote from William Blake's "Tyger Tyger."

This is the chapter in which Rorschach is captured by the police after Veidt (as we learn later) tips them off of where he will be when he discovers Moloch has been murdered in his apartment.

In this chapter, scenes of Rorschach's investigation are intercut with the "Marooned" episode and a few other plot lines, such the staged attack on Veidt.

At the beginning of the chapter, Rorschach visits Moloch to put the screws to him, thinking he knows who the "mask killer" is or may be able to find out.

Also, to bring the cops into it who will arrest Rorschach, there's another murder/suicide, unrelated to the mask killer, from someone "worried about nuclear war."

The main character of "Marooned" has made a raft of dead bodies, trying to beat the Black Freighter back to his home and have a chance to save his family from the horrors the pirates said that they would visit upon them.

The rotting corpses attract a huge shark that becomes entangled in the raft's roped and decking, giving the character enough time to kill it.

On the bottom of page 21, we see the panel shared below as he is eating "raw shark" to avoid starving.

"RAW SHARK"



Not the language as the character notes the "natural inversion" of how the predator has become prey (he's eating the shark; the shark is the predator).

The connection Moore makes is playful. When Veidt calls in the tip (assuming it is Veidt), he is asking the cops if they want to know where to find Rorschach, but the cops mistakenly think the caller is saying "raw shark."

As below from the very next page, page 23:


But the connection proves to be an extendable metaphor on multiple levels.

On one level, like the "Marooned" character eats "raw shark," both the cops and Veidt "eat" Rorschach because he needs to be removed from the scene so as not to interfere with Veidt's plans, and if he gets killed all the better.

On another level, examining the ideas implicit in "Marooned," the character in that comic book has made a raft of dead bodies to literally sail across the ocean in an attempt to save his family and his town from certain and total destruction.

This is the same thing that Veidt is doing. He creates his own raft of dead bodies to push the nations of the world to save themselves, to band together for a single, though fraudulent, purpose.

Also, Rorschach is doing the same thing. He sees himself as a savior, a fighter of evil, no compromise. He is sailing on his own raft of the dead -- Blake, Moloch -- to find a way to save those who remain.

DELIVERED - STEP INTO THE SHADOW WITHOUT COMPLAINT

In chapter ten, pages 22-23, there's another connection.

Rorschach finishes his journal and "delivers it" sends it to the New Frontiersman, a newspaper that he idolizes as the only one that tells the truth.

Here, in the last line of it, Rorschach notes that he "steps into the shadow without complaint."

This "delivery" connects to the pirate narrative again, on the bottom of page 23, in which the narrator of "Marooned" writes: "Dear God, let me have vengeance, then die swiftly, delivered at last into the hands of higher judgment."



Again, this connection works to make meaning on multiple levels.

The "Higher Judgement" is God, who is very much like Veidt, who has set himself up like a God, though Dr. Manhattan, greater still, may actually be a God, with the power of God.

Rorschach delivers himself to Veidt much as the "Marooned" narrator delivers himself to God.

Both seek vengeance. Both are uncompromising. Both take extreme actions to safeguard people and "do the right thing."

But what is the "shadow" Rorschach speaks of? Could this be Jung's shadow? Could this be the dark side, even farther into the belly of the whale than Rorschach went when he "became Rorschach" as he explains in chapter six?

But like Rorschach who delivers himself to the enemy, the narrator of "Marooned" ends up joining the Black Freighter in the end, becoming the horror he hoped to avert, becoming the evil he hoped to prevent.

This is a good start for the analysis I want my students to perform. I could go deeper and expand, but these passages I have written here show clearly the way these "connections" work in Watchmen.

Thanks for reading.

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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 1902.04 - 10:10

- Days ago = 1311 days ago

- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
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Sunday, February 3, 2019

A Sense of Doubt blog post #1439 - "Comics Are Going Downhill" - NOT!


A Sense of Doubt blog post #1439 - "Comics Are Going Downhill" - NOT!

So this post is going up one or another today as I have been working on it for a month, but not working on it as much as I wanted. I am always too ambitious when it comes to posts on comics. And I know this is always a subject to which I can return for extra parts and more commentary. In fact, some comics that I want to write about in depth will have to wait and be written about another time so as to get this published (finally) since this about the fifth resolution to publish "today or else."

Also, this is somewhat timely as I am teaching comic books in my LCC classes right now, starting with Alan Moore and David Gibbons' Watchmen and then later a newer series from Image Comics called Alex + Ada by Jonathan Luna and Sarah Vaughn.

Okay, all the caveats are spread out before us. And, so, here we go...

I got this bee in my bonnet before starting my vacation back at the beginning of the month (December 2018). I tried to bang out this entry during my days off following Christmas, but it was too much to do to get a week's worth of blog entries completed plus packing and planning activities for my trip, so I back-burned this one to work on later, like when I am on the plane, which is where I am now, but then I don't finish it on the plane, so read on.

The bee in the bonnet goes like this: so, I went to this game store on Christmas Eve in Longview. The store is GREAT, and I plan to go back. The owner was reading a hardcover collection of recent  Aquaman comics by Geoff Johns, before DC's Rebirth. Good stuff. Some of my favorite stuff lately. But then he says, that "comics are going downhill" and that so many creators these days do not know "how to tell a good superhero story." I objected. I mentioned Image Comics, who is producing some truly great stuff and it's all creator owned. But then he says the thing about superhero stories, so I mention Dan Slott who takes a great deal of guff from fans as well as Bendis. There's more to unpack with that guy, but I have the bee there, stinging. Seems to me that there is more great material being published in the comic book world in the last few years than EVER BEFORE IN THE HISTORY OF COMICS! Anyone who thinks the best days of comics are gone is not really paying attention to comic books these days.

I always find that when people make sweeping generalizations like "comics are going downhill" or "no one knows how to write a superhero story anymore" that the opinion is based on assumptions that are rarely shared among the people in the discussion (or in my case between as it was just me and the proprietor). If I had been possessed of more time, I would have asked him to name a great superhero comic and to choose time periods in comics that he thought were the best.

I have had many "arguments" with comic book readers about what comics are great, and when they were great. Many times these folks are really hardcore fans, but we can surely use the term fan loosely to define these people who like to debate comics. Mostly no one but a major comic nerd can hold weight in such a discussion but some casual readers try before realizing that they have not read as many comic books as I have. And even I fail to hold up my end with people who have read more, remember more, and have studied more about comics than I have, such as my new PDX friend Nicholas Prom, who does this great podcast here: COMIC REFLECTIONS.

But for people in the industry or majorly invested fans, we can have the conversation. Early in my years in fandom, I became involved with fanzines. It's easier to tell you, reader, that I did fanzines because it's a common word that people know (or just 'zines). But to really explain the difference between an APA (Amateur Press Association), which is what I did, and fanzines is more involved than I want to get in this paragraph. Also, I am sure that the Internet has the answer. Okay, yeah, pretty much: see links above.

So, early on in fandom, I met some folks who did not read current comics, AT ALL, though they were making their own comics and self-publishing. This alone is a dicey proposition, but I know that some current professionals do not read much of anything or nothing at all of the current work being published in the industry. Warren Ellis is a good example, though he does read things despite much of his grumbling about not knowing what's what in the industry. And then he recommends things. What I can say for certain is that he's very selective, like a lot of creators, because who can create like he does AND read the majority of comics currently published in the industry?

Anyway, these fans argued with me that the best comics were published in the 1950s and 1960s. They allowed that some good comics came out in the 1970s and even the early 1980s (after all we were in an APA devoted to the Teen Titans with The New Teen Titans comic coming out in 1980 as DC's answer to Marvel's The Uncanny X-Men). But they insisted that the best era of comic books publishing died with Gardner Fox and the excellent DC comics, most of which came out in the 1960s.

I argue against this position vehemently. I am very fond of the comics of my youth. I started reading comics in 1966, and so most of my beloved comics came out in the late 1960s and through the 1970s. And though I stopped in the late 1970s reading very much but a few select titles -- Fantastic Four, X-Men, Avengers -- I was re-invigorated by meeting other comic nerds while in college. I tentatively dipped my toes back in comic waters in the early 1980s and then went all in about 1985 when I graduated and had some steady pay checks.


Since then, comics have consistently improved and the creators, who grew up in the same era as I did, started making comics with the adult readership in mind. Plus, creator owned material started to be prevalent. The 1980s delivers things like Cerebus and Love and Rockets;  I worked for time as a college internship at Marvel's Epic Comics that produced Dreadstar, Black Dragon, and Swords of the Swashbucklers, all creator owned and prestige-format (or at least of higher quality than the mainstream comics). This time period also features Watchmen, Maus, The Dark Knight Returns, and the Dark Phoenix saga in the X-Men. Manga finds its way to America and the aforementioned Epic starts publishing Akira as well as other companies who bring out Lone Wolf and Cub and Mai: The Psychic Girl (one of my all-time favorites). There's too much to name, though I should just type here the following: Crisis on Infinite Earths, which is FAR SUPERIOR to Marvel's Secret Wars.

Even though the 1990s had some bad stuff and lackluster comic books, it also features Busiek and Alex Ross' Marvels and Alex Ross' and Mark Waid's Kingdom Come. And then some disgruntled creators at Marvel, who want to own their work, create a new company: Image Comics. The first set of publications are not all that amazing. I know some people will argue about the popularity of Spawn and the longevity of  Savage Dragon (still going strong), but, um, Youngblood? Really?


And there's still so much that I haven't mentioned like Sandman and Hellblazer, like Hellboy, Concrete, Sin City, and Hard Boiled. There's UNDERSTANDING COMICS by Scott McCloud. There's Bone, Strangers in Paradise, and work by Charles Burns, Adrian Tomine, and Chester Brown. And there's still so much I have not named.

Image finally starts to come into its own when The Walking Dead launches. The company re-invents itself and then there's an explosion of GREAT, creator-owned work, and more stuff all the time. Arguably, Image is producing the best comic books right now, certainly the best of non-superhero stuff.

And yet, the big two are still doing their thing, and it gets better all the time. With creators like Bendis, Remender, Hickman, Lemire, Jason Aaron, and many more Marvel starts to really weave a rich tapestry of story, character, and its own history. Marvel re-instates the importance of movies about comic books, and suddenly superheroes are the hot topics, like Iron Man and Avengers.

And the popularity has kept growing. DC killed with Dark Knight films, but then it didn't have a hit again until Wonder Woman but Marvel kept hitting home runs: Guardians of the Galaxy, Thor, Captain America, and even Ant Man.

And so that brings us to a discussion of the current comic book fare. I already mentioned Image Comics killing it, but there's great stuff out there by Dark Horse, Oni Press, Vault Comics, and many others. To get this bee out of my head dress, I am going to just focus on the big two.

Without a doubt, my favorite Marvel comic right now is the relaunch of Hulk as The Immortal Hulk.

This comic is smart, complex, well-written, and beautifully illustrated.

It's brilliant.

But according to that guy, there's no good comics right now, and no one knows how to write a superhero story.

Rubbish.

What is a superhero anyway? The Hulk is a monster, and the team of Ewing and Bennett have taken him back to his monster roots.

According to Jeff Lemire on the cover of The Immortal Hulk #009 (#726), "The Immortal Hulk distills one of Marvel's greatest characters back down to its pulpy DNA and what he was always meant to be ... a MONSTER. I LOVE this book."

and

"The best horror comic of the year." -- Kieron Gillen

Critics agree. Comic Book Roundup for The Immortal Hulk gives the book a 8.9/10 critic rating and an 8.7 user rating.

I love COMIC BOOK ROUNDUP.

You can't see this but I can - MY BOOKS - MARVEL. I just wanted to stash this link somewhere that I will see it. You could make your own Marvel account and fill it with comics. It's a good idea, that is, if you like Marvel Comics.

Great comics REDEFINE the genre, redefine a character, shift a comic on its axis.

                                                      If my new friend in the game store means that no one knows how to tell a superhero story anymore because he wants the "same old same old" then he will be bitterly disappointed by a comic book like the Immortal Hulk, that once again gives the green goliath of gamma irradiated power another paradigm shift. The Hulk's history is one long paradigm shift, tracing from the original conception of the character -- who was more grey than green -- to the more mindless brute of the 1970s TV show.

It was Bill Mantlo who gave the Hulk his first major paradigm shift. FYI: Bill Mantlo has a support fund. Mantlo was struck by a car while roller-blading in 1992 and suffered a severe head trauma and spent two weeks in a coma. He has been institutionalized ever since and is not expected to ever make a full recovery. I met Bill and talked with him many times during my internship at Marvel. He was good friends with Jo Duffy and bounced ideas off her after his favorite brainstorming method, which was to walk the streets of New York planning out his Hulk (or Rom or Micronauts or Swashbucklers) scripts. Bill was affable, warm, generous, ebullient, funny, and amazingly creative, even though he did not have the wide-spread notoriety outside the true comic geek fan circles or a Chris Claremont, Marv Wolfman, or Frank Miller. He was still WILDLY imaginative, innovative, and prolific. He met his deadlines and produced stories of high-quality, smartness, and depth.

Mantlo posited that Bruce Banner had suffered child abuse, which had created the "monster of anger and rage" inside his psyche that the gamma radiation unleashed on the world as the Hulk. Peter David and Greg Pak both carried on this legacy in exploring the Hulk comic book as a psychological journey or a man's self, his inner demons, and his very soul. It's the story Al Ewing is continuing and re-imagining in the current comic: The Immortal Hulk.

There is a fairly thorough history of the Hulk with other resources at THE COMIC BOOK DATA BASE, which is a site I just found in writing this post.

HULK at THE COMIC BOOK DATA BASE.

Even though it's run by Gamespot, I have always used COMIC VINE, just because I like the high-end web set up visually.

HULK AT COMIC VINE.

Comic Vine organizes its titles per character in a screwy way, though it is a good attempt to sort out the different "series" as Marvel has relaunched the comic multiple times with number one issues, which it is now rolling together into a "legacy" numbering system along with whatever reboot, relaunch numbering it is currently using.



Just taking a peek at snips from three reviews for issue #8 (see cover above) reveals the impact and high quality of this book.

http://blacknerdproblems.com/the-immortal-hulk-8-review/

 The Immortal Hulk does it again. Just when thought the jade green giant couldn’t get any more terrifying, Al Ewing is able to prove you wrong. Ewing is really making this version of the Hulk his own. This entire series, the writer has been meticulously crafting the Immortal Hulk personality and powers to create a horror monster of his design and I’ll be damn if it doesn’t work so well.

 It’s terrifying to see what the Hulk is now capable of now. It used to be just his strength that people had to fear. I mean, who wouldn’t be afraid of a 10-foot tall green behemoth who can smash cars like paper mache and lift mountains over his head? But now Ewing has created a Hulk that can come back from anything, even being cut into a couple dozen pieces.

 While The Immortal Hulk deserves all the praise, it’s not without faults. It can be hard to see where the plot is going from time to time. Ewing creates these great moments that keep you fixed on the title character but certain plot threads are often left lingering – like whatever the hell is up with Bruce’s father and whatever Mcgee is trying to accomplish.

https://comicsverse.com/immortal-hulk-8-review/


SUMMARY
THE IMMORTAL HULK #8 is the scariest issue of an already terrifying series. Al Ewing crafts a terrifically chilling story which works just as well on its own as it does as the part of an ongoing story. Joe Bennett gives his all this issue, and it shows. It’s a perfect jumping-on point for this incredible new series.

Tales to Astonish (and Haunt) in THE IMMORTAL HULK #8
Not only does Ewing craft an incredible Hulk tale with THE IMMORTAL HULK #8, but he also writes a finely tuned horror story as well. What I love most about this issue is how, if you took out the subplot about Gamma Flight and changed to Hulk to a generic monster, the story would still work 100%. It feels like something out of an old TALES FROM THE CRYPT issue. It begins with upfront horror, with a gigantic, green heart being cut open. The heart begins beating again as it gets closer to its body. That, in itself, is scary. Then, we add in the cocky mad scientist who believes that he’s outwitted some dumb brute. Eventually, the story takes an ironic turn and the same monster he was once gloating to then literally swallows the scientist whole. It really could stand on its own as a fantastic horror story.

http://www.adventuresinpoortaste.com/2018/11/07/the-immortal-hulk-8-review/

The approach taken with The Immortal Hulk has been an exciting one. Al Ewing, paired with the body horror genius of Joe Bennett, have been delivering one of the most twisted and freakish takes on the character in some time. It has also been a tale that plays with identity in what feels like new and exciting ways. Long story short, this is the most fun I’ve had with a Hulk comic since reading my first story with the character.

So what’s it about?

The official summary reads:
Bruce Banner is dead. His corpse has been dissected, his organs catalogued, and his inner workings are being studied by the scientists of Shadow Base. Bruce Banner is no longer a threat. That just leaves the IMMORTAL HULK…
Bennett has been putting on a show with every issue he’s drawn and this issue may be his best yet. There is a double page spread that may actually make you hurl, which is followed by a near double page spread (a double page layout to be more precise) that makes things even grosser. The Hulk is always considered to be a hard muscle machine, but here we see him transform from goopy entrails into massive amounts of muscle. Even when Hulk transforms into Bruce Banner it’s a sight to be seen.

and so......................................
switching back to me...........


But trying to find the comic series before the current one, to reference Doc Green, and one of the two best examples (one by Peter David and the other by Mark Waid... I think?) of smart Bruce Banner in charge of the Hulk's body is worth mentioning as we discuss paradigm shifts of  the character.

So since the days of my T-shirt blog, I have been entering my comic books purchased in blog entries by month. I sort the list of comics into the order I plan to read them, which reflects a combination of publication schedules; my favorites; reads that are quick, which often rise to the top of the stack simply because they are fun to read as they read quickly.

Also, the list shows something of what comics are good because some of the best will rise to the top. But some very excellent comics, like Monstress and Stray Bullets, fall by the wayside in these cases because they are not quick reads or they are comics that I want to save to read once I have a lot. So the system has some flaws.

BUT it does show me some of the best comics of the last six months. Clearly, Batman is one of these comics, appearing ten times near the top of my reading stack. Also, Immortal Hulk is clearly one of these comics as well. Though I have an affection for Doctor Strange and Avengers, Runaways beats both of those books hands down.

THE TOP OF THE COMIC STACK MOST READ LIST OF 2018

Batman - 10
Immortal Hulk - 7
Avengers - 7
Doctor Strange - 6
Runaways - 6
Hawkman -5
Justice League - 5
Kick-Ass - 5
Man of Steel - 5
Fantastic Four - 4
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

I have more to say on comics in future posts, but this lists and the data that follows, plus the long diatribe to get here, show what I am valuing currently in comics and what I would recommend to new and old readers alike.

Comics are better than ever right now.

Are you reading them?

LISTS BY MONTH

Comics November 2018
Fantastic Four #003
Fantastic Four #004
X-Men Black Emma Frost #001 (Bachalo)
Infinity Wars #005 (of 6)
Green Lantern #1
Kick-Ass #9 Cvr A Frusin (Mr)
Runaways #015
Mage Hero Denied #13 (of 15)
Hawkman #6
Immortal Hulk #008
Immortal Hulk #009

Weekly Comics October 2018 - SORTED
Heroes in Crisis #2 of 9
Action Comics #1004 Foil
Batman #56 Foil
Batman #57
Kick-Ass #8 Cvr A Frusin (Mr)
Superman #4 Foil
Runaways #14
Immortal Hulk #7
Hawkman #5 Foil
Doctor Strange #6
Avengers #9
Tony Stark Iron Man #4
Infinity Wars #4 (of 6)
Aquaman #41 (Drowned Earth)
Thor #6
Walking Dead #184 Cvr A Adlard & Stewart (Mr)

September 2018 - Comics - SORTED READING ORDER
Fantastic Four #2
Kick-Ass #7 Cvr A Frusin (Mr)
Doomsday Clock #7 (of 12)
Doctor Strange #5
Mage Hero Denied #12 (of 15)
Infinity Wars #3 (of 6)
Justice League #7
Justice League #8
Runaways #13
Avengers #7
Avengers #8
Action Comics #1003
Superman #3
Immortal Hulk #5
Immortal Hulk #6
Hawkman #4
Aquaman #40 Sink Atlantis
Batman #54
Batman #55

August-September 2018 Comics - SORTED

Infinity Wars #002
Runaways #012
Action Comics #1002
Avengers #006
Batman #53
Extermination #002
Doctor Strange #004 / #394
Wildstorm #016
Iron Man #003 / #603
Thor #004 / #710
Amazing Spider-Man #004 / #805
Daredevil #607
Aquaman #39
Ms Marvel #33 / #52

Comics from July-August - SORTED READING ORDER

Fantastic Four #1
Kick-Ass #6 Cvr A Romita Jr (Mr)
Doomsday Clock #6 (of 12)
Superman #1
Superman #2
Superman: Action Comics #1001
Runaways #11
Avengers #5
Tony Stark Iron Man #2
Hawkman #2
Hawkman #3
Batman #51
Batman #52

Comics from June 2018 - Reading order...........
Batman #48
Batman #49
Batman #50
Man of Steel #2 (of 6)
Man of Steel #3 (of 6)
Man of Steel #4 (of 6)
Man of Steel #5 (of 6)
Man of Steel #6 (of 6)
Kick-Ass #5 Cvr A Romita Jr (Mr)
Hawkman #1
Runaways #10
Immortal Hulk #1
Immortal Hulk #2
Tony Stark Iron Man #1
Avengers #3
Avengers #4
Thor #1
Thor #2
Doctor Strange #1
Doctor Strange #2
Doctor Strange #3
Justice League #1
Justice League #2
Justice League #3


Counts of appearances of comics in the top ten of the reading order lists.

SORTED COUNTS

Batman - 10
Immortal Hulk - 7
Avengers - 7
Doctor Strange - 6
Runaways - 6
Hawkman -5
Justice League - 5
Kick-Ass - 5
Man of Steel - 5
Fantastic Four - 4
Action Comics - 4
Infinity Wars - 4
Superman - 4
Thor - 4
Tony Stark Iron Man - 3
Aquaman - 3
Doomsday Clock - 2
Heroes in Crisis -2
Mage Hero Denied - 2
Amazing Spider-Man - 1
Daredevil - 1
Extermination - 1
Green Lantern - 1
Iron Man - 1
Ms Marvel - 1
Walking Dead - 1
Wildstorm -1
X-Men Black Emma Frost - 1 (Bachalo)

UNSORTED COUNTS

Action Comics - 4
Amazing Spider-Man - 1
Aquaman - 3
Avengers - 7
Batman - 10
Daredevil - 1
Doctor Strange - 6
Doomsday Clock - 2
Extermination - 1
Fantastic Four - 4
Green Lantern - 1
Hawkman -5
Heroes in Crisis -2
Immortal Hulk - 7
Infinity Wars - 4
Iron Man - 1
Justice League - 5
Kick-Ass - 5
Mage Hero Denied - 2
Man of Steel - 5
Ms Marvel - 1
Runaways - 6
Superman - 4
Thor - 4
Tony Stark Iron Man - 3
Walking Dead - 1
Wildstorm -1
X-Men Black Emma Frost - 1 (Bachalo)


INDIVIDUAL ISSUES LISTED

Action Comics #1003
Action Comics #1004 Foil
Action Comics #1002
Amazing Spider-Man #004 / #805
Aquaman #39
Aquaman #40 Sink Atlantis
Aquaman #41 (Drowned Earth)
August-September 2018 Comics - SORTED
Avengers #7
Avengers #8
Avengers #5
Avengers #3
Avengers #006
Avengers #4
Avengers #9
Batman #51
Batman #53
Batman #57
Batman #56 Foil
Batman #48
Batman #49
Batman #50
Batman #55
Batman #54
Batman #52
Comics from July-August - SORTED READING ORDER
Comics from June 2018 - Reading order...........
Comics November 2018
Daredevil #607
Doctor Strange #004 / #394
Doctor Strange #2
Doctor Strange #6
Doctor Strange #1
Doctor Strange #5
Doctor Strange #3
Doomsday Clock #7 (of 12)
Doomsday Clock #6 (of 12)
Extermination #002
Fantastic Four #004
Fantastic Four #2
Fantastic Four #1
Fantastic Four #003
Green Lantern #1
Hawkman #2
Hawkman #1
Hawkman #3
Hawkman #6
Hawkman #4
Hawkman #5 Foil
Heroes in Crisis #2 of 9
Immortal Hulk #5
Immortal Hulk #6
Immortal Hulk #009
Immortal Hulk #1
Immortal Hulk #008
Immortal Hulk #7
Immortal Hulk #2
Infinity Wars #3 (of 6)
Infinity Wars #002
Infinity Wars #4 (of 6)
Infinity Wars #005 (of 6)
Iron Man #003 / #603
Justice League #7
Justice League #3
Justice League #8
Justice League #2
Justice League #1
Kick-Ass #9 Cvr A Frusin (Mr)
Kick-Ass #7 Cvr A Frusin (Mr)
Kick-Ass #6 Cvr A Romita Jr (Mr)
Kick-Ass #8 Cvr A Frusin (Mr)
Kick-Ass #5 Cvr A Romita Jr (Mr)
Mage Hero Denied #13 (of 15)
Mage Hero Denied #12 (of 15)
Man of Steel #3 (of 6)
Man of Steel #5 (of 6)
Man of Steel #4 (of 6)
Man of Steel #6 (of 6)
Man of Steel #2 (of 6)
Ms Marvel #33 / #52
Runaways #14
Runaways #012
Runaways #11
Runaways #015
Runaways #13
Runaways #10
September 2018 - Comics - SORTED READING ORDER
Superman: Action Comics #1001
Superman #2
Superman #3
Superman #4 Foil
Superman #1
Thor #6
Thor #004 / #710
Thor #1
Thor #2
Tony Stark Iron Man #4
Tony Stark Iron Man #1
Tony Stark Iron Man #2
Walking Dead #184 Cvr A Adlard & Stewart (Mr)
Weekly Comics October 2018 - SORTED
Wildstorm #016
X-Men Black Emma Frost #001 (Bachalo)

https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/comic-reglections/comic-reflections

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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 1902.03 - 10:10

- Days ago = 1310 days ago

- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
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